Don’t know if you remember a piece in the New York Times last month by Nicholas Confessore titled ‘Small Donors Are Slow to Return to the Obama Fold’:

“They were once among President Obama’s most loyal supporters and a potent symbol of his political brand: voters of moderate means who dug deep for the candidate and his message of hope and change, sending him $10 or $25 or $50 every few weeks or months. But in recent months, the frustration and disillusionment that have dragged down Mr. Obama’s approval ratings have crept into the ranks of his vaunted small-donor army, underscoring the challenges he faces as he seeks to rekindle grass-roots enthusiasm for his re-election bid.”

After yesterday’s third quarter figures it’ll be, eh, interesting to see if Confessore does a follow-up piece.

As Adam Sorensen (Time) put it: ” ….. The precise breakdown for the third quarter won’t be available for another few days, but there’s enough out there to tell us that the small-dollar donors have not, in fact, been “Slow to Return to the Obama Fold.” According to the Obama campaign, some 600,000 people gave to the cause during this last reporting period at an average of $56 per donation. In the prior quarter, there were around 550,000 donors giving an average of $69. When the campaign filed with FEC, that worked out to be $22 million given in increments of $200 or less, almost half of the total haul.

Some context is in order. Consider this: Mitt Romney, the GOP’s fundraising juggernaut, claimed just 6% of his second-quarter intake from small-dollar donors. And during his groundswell campaign in 2007, then Senator Obama made headlines by drawing a little less than a third of his $33 million second-quarter haul from donations less than $200. Now Obama’s up around 50%.”

Adam Sorensen: …. one can understand why California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom might have thought his recent venting session at a gathering of fellow Democrats in Half Moon Bay would be met with approving clucks or, at very least, silent nods. Not so much.

“Among the Newsom jabs: Obama should have pushed his agenda harder when the Democrats still controlled both houses of Congress,” recounted the San Francisco Chronicle, “a remark that drew a handful of boos from the audience.” … Newsom ran smack into what seems to be a common misconception about the Obama presidency: Though many of the left’s opinion makers have turned away from Obama, broader liberal flight is a phenomenon that simply doesn’t exist.

Real Clear Politics’ latest data crunching pegs the President’s average approval among Democrats at a robust 76.8%. (For comparison, in October of 1995, soon-to-be-re-elected Bill Clinton’s Democratic support was a near-identical 77%, according to Gallup.) And what of the real left? The ones whose disappointment has been given voice by people like Drew Westen to Paul Krugman? It turns out self-identified liberals’ support for Obama isn’t far behind at 72% in Gallup’s latest tracking data. (The same group gave Clinton 65% approval in 1995)….

…. Gavin Newsom, who rumor has it might run for Congress next year when Rep. Lynn Woolsey is likely to retire, should know that in the liberal bastion of San Francisco, there’s little political upside in breaking with Obama.

Adam Serwer (Mother Jones): On Wednesday, I noted that Rush Limbaugh’s latest stereotypical race parody featured President Barack Obama as blaxploitation detective John Shaft, even though just about the only two things they have in common is that they’re both black.

Ta-Nehisi Coates observes that Michael Moore and Bill Maher, in expressing their disappointment with Obama, embrace the same basic idea.

Unable to limit their criticisms to Obama’s politics, on The View, Moore repeated Maher’s statement that “I went into the polls voting for the black guy, and what I got was the white guy.”

Coates writes: I know Michael Moore and Bill Maher think this is a great line…But it really isn’t. In fact, it’s racist, and Michael Moore would do well to stop repeating it. It really is no better than the Kenyan anti-colonial bit, and in fact is good deal worse ….

What Limbaugh, Moore and Maher all have in common is a common, reductive expectation of what a “black man” is supposed to be – aggressive, belligerent, intimidating – and Obama doesn’t fit the bill…..

…. If you’re president, though, it’s much easier to just brush your shoulders off—dealing with those kind of expectations when you’re an average person is considerably more difficult. Especially when the “liberals” are the ones saying stuff like this.

Extreme Liberal: This is a must see, vintage smackdown of the “firebaggers.” Lawrence O’Donnell and Ezra Klein educate the foaming at the mouth “progressives” Jane Hamsher, Adam Green and some other firebagger wanna-be named Mike Roger Hodge. Watch and enjoy!

soldoutsandsellouts: Progressive Change Campaign Committee Treasurer Adam Green purchased the URL ColberSuperPAC.com, omitting the t in Stephen Colbert’s name, and then redirected that URL to his own PAC web site in an apparent attempt to steal critical membership and donations away from Colbert’s PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.

… Adam Green registered colbersuperpac.com at Godaddy.com, Inc. on July 1, 2011 for one year using the same address he used to register PCCC with the Federal Election Commission. Soon afterward, the URL began redirecting unwitting ABTT supporters to Green’s PCCC PAC website, soliciting memberships and donations intended for ABTT via a splash page similar to the graphic included here….

… According to PCCC’s ‘Statement of Organization’ filed with the Federal Election Commission, the committee was formed on December 19, 2008, the original treasurer was and remains Adam Green…..

Despite PCCC’s brief existence, the committee has already received two letters from the Commission requesting additional information for expenditure reporting discrepancies, both for 2010. In both circumstances, the Commission’s first request appeared to be its final warning including wording to the effect that PCCC must adequately respond by the deadline or risk audit or enforcement actions….

That’s right, ‘progressive’ OUTRAGE! peddlers Miss BP (aka the Hamsher creature, Tea Party and Grover Norquist buddy) and Republican/Libertarian Gary Johnson’s Number One fan (aka Greenwald) paid themselves $24,000 each for “strategic consulting” from Accountability Now donations – precisely $24,000 more than they donated in 2008 and 2010 to candidates challenging “corporate-controlled incumbents”, as they promised Accountability Now would do.

And how was most of their money raised? By sending out hysterical emails to their sheeple distorting the words of President Obama, firing up the hate …. and then pleading for donations to fight this dastardly traitor.

Well, well, well …. here we go again:

The Reid Report: Adam Green runs the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, an entity designed to automatically disgorge mass solicitation emails attacking President Obama every time the president speaks, thereby raising copious amounts of cash to … um … what do they do, exactly? Oh, right… to buy a few ads attacking President Obama and the occasional Republican.

Green and his fellow travelers on the anti-Obama left have been spoiling for a fight with the White House on entitlements, which these folks are apparently convinced Barack Obama is about to feed into a giant shredding machine …. but Green’s latest fundraising email, which landed in my in-box just after 7 p.m. on Monday (and was headlined BREAKING, even though the news it refers to happened hours earlier, at 11 a.m.) opens on an exquisitely dishonest note:

BREAKING: Obama outrage.

Joy-Ann,

BREAKING: Today, in a press conference, President Obama came right out and said it: He’s pushing for benefit cuts in important programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

You and 175,000 others boldly pledged that if Obama actually cuts Medicare/Medicaid benefits, you’ll take your money and volunteering elsewhere in 2012.

Green then urges recipients to sign a pledge not to give money to the Obama campaign if he cuts Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security ….. presumably, they should give money to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee instead…

****

Ah yes, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee:

Wow, $725.2k of funds raised in 2010 went on “administrative costs”, $503,788 of that on “salaries and benefits” ….. oh, look:

Workbench (2010): …. PACs have different policies regarding whether they compensate the people who run the committees. Some don’t accept one cent of donor money and devote it all to their cause, while others pay themselves salaries, travel expenses and office rent. I interviewed Darcy Burner, a former Democratic Congressional candidate from Washington state who runs the not-for-profit Progressive Congress Action Fund, to learn whether it’s common for left-wing PACs to pay themselves. “The bigger PACs require full-time staff to operate — to raise money, to vet candidates [and] to file reports,” she said. “I think the key question would be more one of whether people giving the money understand what it will be used for. … There’s a trust relationship with donors that requires some truth and transparency about how money is going to be used.”

Adam Serwer (Washington Post): Republicans are touting yet another poll that purports to predict the end of the Jewish allegiance to the Democratic Party. Citing a new poll by John McLaughlin and Pat Caddell they have convinced themselves that this time, Obama really is in trouble among Jewish voters.

…. the poll is laughably bogus. Not only does their sample skew conservative, (only 64 percent of respondents voted for Obama, as opposed to the 77 percent of Jewish votes he actually got) but many questions are phrased in as leading a manner as possible. Indeed, given the wording of the questions, it’s actually surprising that 63 percent of respondents overall approved of Obama.

Here’s their phrasing for a question on Obama’s policy on Israel:

Considering what President Obama has proposed for Israel just over a year before his 2012 re-election campaign – a return to the 1967 borders, dividing Jerusalem, and allowing the right of return for Palestinian Arabs to Israel – how concerned would you be about President Obama’s policies towards Israel if he were re-elected and did not have to worry about another election?

….. Again: Obama hasn’t proposed “a return to the 1967 borders”…

What’s surprising is that only 67 percent of Jewish voters in the poll said they were concerned about Obama’s policy towards Israel should he be reelected – this, even though M&C invented out of thin air the idea that Obama supports a “right of return” for Palestinian Arabs … this question seems to have been designed to elicit panic about Obama among the poll’s staunchly pro-Israel respondents, but even that wasn’t enough to do it.

The phrasing in this poll is comically skewed …. As always, the game is to perpetuate the sad conservative meme that this time, really this time, American Jews are going to abandon their liberalism and vote Republican because Obama is a huge anti-Semite. The only thing this poll reveals is how badly some want to keep this storyline going.

Adam Serwer: ….I realize that killing bin Laden was popular, but as someone who believes that the fight against terrorism can and should be conducted according to the rule of law, it’s important to make clear why killing bin Laden was legally justified.

Assassination is illegal under U.S. law! The executive order banning assassinations doesn’t apply to the targeting of lawful military targets during wartime … the Congress of the United States authorized the use of military force against bin Laden in full view of the public in 2001….

Killing bin Laden was illegal under international law! Human Rights First Daphne Eviatar: “As the leader of al Qaeda – an armed group against whom the U.S. is at war – who appears to have had a significant role directing its fighting forces, [Osama bin Laden] is targetable. It’s similar to the targetability of the commander-in-chief of any regular armed forces at war.”

But he was unarmed! …It would be illegal to kill bin Laden if he had surrendered or been captured first … Combatants aren’t legally required to allow lawful targets to arm themselves before killing them, rather the onus was on bin Laden to surrender.

Didn’t we violate Pakistan’s sovereignty? Maybe, but Jeremy Scahill reported in 2009 on the existence of a secret deal between Pakistan and the United States to allow the U.S. to go after bin Laden if they found him in Pakistan, while Pakistan would condemn any such operation after the fact.

What about Nuremberg? The Nazis got trials! In my view, a trial would have been morally preferable to killing bin Laden, but the absence of one doesn’t make his killing illegal. … I would have preferred seeing bin Laden face a federal judge. Of course, there’s another issue to consider here: How the hell do you find a fair and impartial jury to hear the case against Osama bin Laden in the United States?

Adam Serwer (Washington Post): This Wednesday morning become one of the most surreal and ridiculous moments in the history of American politics when the White House decided to release copies of President Barack Obama’s “long form birth certificate,” in an attempt to quiet conspiracy theorists who believe the president was born elsewhere…

….According to Media Matters, Fox News has spent over two hours promoting false claims about Obama’s birthplace across 54 segments, and only in ten did Fox News hosts challenge those claims. This isn’t just about Trump. All he did was encourage the communications wing of the conservative movement to go into overdrive in an attempt to make birtherism mainstream.

Aside from being one of the most idiotic moments in American political history, this marks a level of personal humiliation no previous president has ever been asked to endure. Other presidents have been the target of crazy conspiracy theories, sure, but few have been as self-evidently absurd as birtherism. None has been so clearly rooted in anxieties about the president’s racial identity, because no previous American president has been black.

This whole situation is an embarrassment to the country. Yesterday Jesse Jackson described birtherism as racial “code,” but there’s nothing “coded” about it. It’s just racism….

And birtherism is only one of a number of racially charged conspiracy theories that have bubbled out of the right-wing swamp and have been allowed to fester by conservative elites. Those who have spent the last two years clinging to the notion that the president wasn’t born in the United States, who have alleged that the president wasn’t intelligent enough to write his own autobiography or somehow coasted to magna cum laude at Harvard law, are carrying on new varieties of an old, dying tradition of American racism. Similar accusations dogged early black writers like Frederick Douglass and Phyllis Wheatley, whose brilliance provoked an existential crisis among people incapable of abandoning myths of black intellectual inferiority.

….Sadly, those who fostered doubts about the president’s citizenship are unlikely to relent in the face of factual proof, because birtherism was never about the facts. For its most ardent proponents, it was and is about their inability to accept the legitimacy of a black man in the White House. Nothing about the decision to release the president’s birth certificate can change that.